I spent most of the weekend setting up and trying different lighting schemes for some of the small products I'll be shooting in the next few weeks. Even something as seemingly simple as shooting a "still life" in a studio takes more gear than you'd think at first glance, especially if you want the images to "pop".
One piece of gear thats become essential when shooting with small strobes is the Justin Clamp or the 175F Bogen - Manfrotto Spring Grip Clamp with Attached Flash Shoe if you prefer. Designed by Joe McNally and Bogen's Justin Staley, its become the de-facto standard for mounting a hot-shoe flash in a studio or on location. Although not an inexpensive item at a little over $50, it sure beats using gaffer tape to position your flashes in unusual places during a shoot. For my products shots I used it as an inexpensive boom to position the main light source above and and slightly in front of the products being photographed.
Pair of Aces
Copyright 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 50D set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 32mm, f/16 for 0.7 seconds at ISO 100 on Lexar Professional digital film. Post capture processing was done in Lightroom 2 using Nik Software's Viveza. Click on the image above for a larger version.
The lighting setup for this shot was fairly simple using a Lastolite Cubelite and two Canon 580EX II Speedlites. One 580EX II Speedlite was positioned above and and slightly in front of the subject and the other was positioned to the right. A single reflector directly left of the subject was used to add fill where needed. All exposure ratio magic was done wirelessly using Canon's E-TTL II sorcery. Later this week I'll post more about this with photos of the actual setup and the flash settings used.
Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon, Canon 50D, Justin Clamp, Photographic Gear, Product Photography
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